Inside 10 Rillington Place: John Christie and me, the untold truth

Product Information

Kathleen Maloney, a 26 year-old local prostitute, was last seen in early to mid January but was probably killed after Rita Nelson. These problems, coupled with Rillington Place’s troubling history, meant that the entire block was demolished in 1978. After persuading her that her bronchitis could be cured by inhaling his ‘special mixture’, Christie subdued her with carbon monoxide before raping and strangling her.

has suggested that Christie planned to bury the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine in the garden, but was prevented from doing so by lack of opportunity and his fibrositis. Christie for one stands out as a man capable of appearing normal, benign and kindly, despite his horrifying perversions. Vincent Canby of The New York Times described 10 Rillington Place as "a solemn, earnest polemic of a movie, one with very little vulgar suspense . King is reported to have said he was often woken in the night sensing an oppressive, dark energy of a woman in the room; he bought incense in an attempt to cleanse number 10.The film is resolutely unglamorous, its depressed post-World War II setting feeling painfully authentic and lived-in. Possibly, but as far as he felt sorrow I suspect it was more an act of self pity for having messed up his own life by doing so, and depriving himself of two people who many times had brought him pleasure.

However, Beryl’s behavior must be understood in the light of the environment she was living in, and if she did let her household duties slide, I don’t doubt she was suffering from depression due to living with such an unsupportive, unsympathetic, and frequently abusive husband who I’m sure blamed her for his own faults and everything that went wrong in his own life. Christie gave evidence against Timothy Evans at the Old Bailey in 1950 and Evans was found guilty and hanged.His execution for Christie’s crime forms one of the key scenes in 10 Rillington Place, with both Attenborough and Geeson acknowledging that they were drawn to the project due to its implicit criticism of capital punishment. Praise went to John Hurt for his "remarkably subtle and fascinating performance as the bewildered young man who plays into the hands of both the murderer and the police.

Perhaps aware that he would soon be found out, Christie killed three more women over the next three months. Second, and quite unrelated, another point that was never clear from any source was what really happened to Evans’s father Daniel. He is also thought to have been responsible for the murders of his fellow tenant Beryl Evans and her baby daughter Geraldine – murders which were originally blamed on Beryl’s husband Timothy.

In criminal lore, it is usually the perpetrator who becomes infamous such as The Black Panther, "Acid Bath" Haigh, Neville Heath, the Yorkshire Ripper, the list goes on. Geeson’s Beryl, striving pitifully for a better life in the face of grinding poverty and lack of opportunity, is overruled by her husband in her choice of flat, and tolerates his unreasonable rages and melancholy.